It is known to approximate robots or, more specifically, their links by means of individual primitives, in particular, for planning collision-free paths and for monitoring robots for collisions.
In contrast, U.S. Pat. No. 5,347,459A proposes approximating each link of a robot by means of a plurality of spheres, assigning three dimensional voxels to the distances from obstacles and detecting a collision, if a radius of a sphere in a three dimensional voxel exceeds the distance, which said voxel occupies.
The object of the present invention is to improve the operation of a machine, in particular, a robot.